We are pouring intense effort into a large number of projects and research initiatives. As a result, new things are always happening. Keep up with the recent developments here.
This Week
Various organizations are working to minimize the risk humanity faces from global threats, including potential threats from synthetic biology, nuclear war, climate change, advanced artificial intelligence, and other sources. We have now contacted many of these organizations and learned their plans.
We have now launched our
Leverage Research Internship Program. Do you want to learn more about Leverage Research? Do you want to work alongside our researchers on challenging and exciting projects? Apply now for a
Research Internship.
Last Week
Many people want the world to become much better. The idea of pursuing goals strategically is very simple. So why isn't history filled with highly strategic groups aiming explicitly at maximizing their positive impact? We call this the Small Fermi Paradox, and we have finally made some headway on it.
A bunch of our members so far have come from
Less Wrong, a community devoted to refining the art of human rationality. This week we posted to Less Wrong, introducing ourselves. As a result, some additional members of the Less Wrong community contacted us about getting involved.
As our organization grows, it is becoming more and more essential to have ways for our members to share information. As a result of this, we recently decided to try out a new set of procedures for helping our members stay connected and get the information they need.
2 Weeks Ago
So far, our analysis of effectiveness has led us to the conclusion that it really matters what a person believes they have the power to accomplish. As part of developing our
effectiveness training program, we have now developed a test that measures people's perceptions of their own abilities.
This week we designed a new system for keeping track of how much time our members spend working on different projects. This will allow us to more effectively gauge how quickly our projects are moving and where we will need to intensify our efforts.
Our New York location is now up and running. We have started receiving visitors. We will soon be ready to host our upcoming Leverage Research Intern Program. If you would like to learn more about Leverage and would like to arrange a visit, please
contact us.
Leverage Research is now one year old. In our first year, we quadrupled in size, acquired funding, acquired a physical location in New York City, created several
training programs, launched a
Connection Theory business, and made significant steps forward on many of
our projects. This year we'll do even more.
3 Weeks Ago
It is now the end of 2011. We launched at the beginning of this year with 6 team members. Within six months, we had doubled. Now we have 23 team members and 2 assistant researchers. This means that within the last six months, we doubled once more. We intend to double again by the end of 2012.
4 Weeks Ago
Lots of people have questions about
Connection Theory. We have started a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document to try to answer these questions. The FAQ is available
here. We will be expanding it over time to answer additional questions.
One way to improve the world is to donate money to the most effective charities. Where should someone donate to have the greatest impact? We have developed a first draft of an answer to this question. We will post a revised draft of our answer soon.
5 Weeks Ago
This week we forged a partnership with
The Cure Is Now. The Cure Is Now is a national non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating disease by promoting the development of radically advanced technologies. We're excited to see what we can do together.
We have now received a funding commitment from our first major donor. We will publicly announce the details, including how we plan to use the funds, when we do our media launch early in 2012. Stay tuned! In the meantime, it's full speed ahead on our projects.
We have a plan for making the world a better place. Our plan is somewhat complex, though, and this can make it hard to read. As part of our ongoing attempt to make our plan as accessible as we can, we have created a
visual refinement of the plan. This visual refinement is available as a PDF file.
We have completed the second installment of our
AGI Threat Persuasion Study. Over the next few weeks, we plan to analyze the data. We will then release an updated AGI Threat Persuasion Study document that includes the new data and whatever new conclusions we have reached.
We have found a location for our New York base of operations. This site will be our first physical location and will host one quarter of our current team. We intend to use the site for many purposes, including our upcoming Leverage Research Internship Program. We will start work there on January 1st.
6 Weeks Ago
Lots of organizations out there are trying to change the world. How many of them have a systematic approach? How many are focused on effectiveness? We have now begun to analyze what types of organizations we are likely to encounter and where we should expect to find them.
Bit by bit, the volunteers for the
Institute for Philosophical Research (IPR) have been improving IPR and expanding IPR's reach. Most recently, one of the volunteers has started to redesign IPR's website. The new website will be significantly better than the current one.
Our History »